On Borrowed Time

Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski sees the same things I do in Bush's Victory Plan v4,0:

The decision to escalate the level of the U.S. military involvement while imposing "benchmarks" on the "sovereign" Iraqi regime, and to emphasize the external threat posed by Syria and Iran, leaves the administration with two options once it becomes clear -- as it almost certainly will -- that the benchmarks are not being met. One option is to adopt the policy of "blame and run": i.e., to withdraw because the Iraqi government failed to deliver. That would not provide a remedy for the dubious "falling dominoes" scenario, which the president so often has outlined as the inevitable, horrific consequence of U.S. withdrawal. The other alternative, perhaps already lurking in the back of Bush's mind, is to widen the conflict by taking military action against Syria or Iran. It is a safe bet that some of the neocons around the president and outside the White House will be pushing for that. Others, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, may also favor it.

The speech did not explore even the possibility of developing a framework for an eventual political solution. The search for a political solution would require a serious dialogue about a joint American-Iraqi decision regarding the eventual date of a U.S. withdrawal with all genuine Iraqi political leaders who command respect and wield physical power. The majority of the Iraqi people, opinion polls show, favor such a withdrawal within a relatively short period. A jointly set date would facilitate an effort to engage all of Iraq's neighbors in a serious discussion about regional security and stability. The U.S. refusal to explore the possibility of talks with Iran and Syria is a policy of self-ostracism that fits well into the administration's diplomatic style of relying on sloganeering as a substitute for strategizing.

Even the Bush administration knows that Maliki's government will fail to hit Bush's benchmarks - as Condi admitted when she said that Maliki is living on "borrowed time" and is obviously implicit in Defense Secretary Gates statement yesterday that:

"The timetable for the introduction of additional US forces will provide ample opportunity early on, and before many of the additional US troops actually arrive in Iraq, to evaluate the progress of this endeavour and whether the Iraqis are fulfilling their commitments to us."

That is why they are running with a version of neoconservative and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley's plan - one designed well before the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group issued their report and seconded since by other neoconservatives with an inside line to senior Bush officials like the American Enterprise Institute (who would actually like even more troops - 50,000 - from where, they do not say). Make no mistake, Bush's plan is a neoconservative plan. The strategy has not changed.

It seems obvious to me that the plan is designed to fail and American troops will then be withdrawn from Iraq, before the year's end. The Iraqi government will be blamed and it will mean the downfall of Maliki's shaky government. That will clear up the one huge stumbling block against airstrikes on Iran - the tenuous position in such a case of those U.S. forces currently in Iraq, who would become targets not just of any Iranian counterstrikes but also of a general Shiite insurrection right across their only line of withdrawal and their only line of supply.

But I believe blame will also be allocated in plenty to Iran, who will continue to be accused in very definite terms (but without any hard evidence) of aiding insurgents and militias, both Sunni and Shiite, in attacking U.S. troops, of plotting to bring nuclear mutually assured destruction to the region by attacking Israel and of undermining stability in general. Further, I expect Iran will be deliberately provoked by outrageous incursions on its national interest, such as arbitary arrests of diplomats on trumped-up charges, in the hope that Iran will carry out reciprocal actions which can be used to ratchet up a nationalistic fervor here in the United States. All before election time - because the GOP knows it has no vote winner like the fear of impending or actual war and Iran is the boogeyman par excellence. John McCain, the Republican frontrunner and someone who has been running to the neocon right for months now, has already backed Bush's plan.

I'm uncertain whether the demagogues of Iran will be able to resist the neocon's deliberate temptation. I advance as evidence that they will not the news that, despite ever louder rhetoric of nuclear progress, Iran has quietly stalled its uranium enrichment program. The actions say peace but the egos of those in charge cannot let that move for peace be seen as weakness so they continue beating belligerent drums. (Of course the neocons, ever paranoid, see this move as being a diversion of effort into alleged secret military programs for which there is not a single shred of real evidence.)

It is in this light that recent raids against Iranian diplomatic personnel in Iraq must be seen. On Christmas Day, tipped off by a gleeful MeK (the neocon's favorite Islamist-Marxist terror group who used to do Saddam's dirty work and who believe their leader, who thinks he is the Moslem messiah, should run Iran) American troops flagrantly violated Iraqi "sovereignty" and international norms by arresting four accredited Iranian diplomats. All were in the country at the invite of the Iraqi President. Some were taken at gunpoint from a car carrying Iranian diplomatic plates while another two were snatched in a raid on the home of the head of Iraq's national ecurity committe which lies within the compound of the head of one of the main Shiite parties. The two had an appointment scheduled with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki later that day. All were released to the Iraqis within days, and handed back to the Iranian government and despite claims that evidence was found which proved Iran was behind attacks on both US and Iraqi troops as well as smuggling weapons to the insurgency, no evidence has actually been shown to the public. The Iraqi government, incensed that the raids had been undertaken without their oversight or permission, protested strongly.

To sum up, the arrests were a kabuki of trumped-up intelligence, heavy-handed actions in violation of Iraq's sovereignty, accusations and claims but no actual evidence produced and no-one kept in custody. In any case, given the list of those they were visiting, if the accusations were true then Iran has pulled of the intelligence coup of the millenium, managing to place its proxies in every position of power. By the Bush administration's own claims, Iran has been playing chess while Bush played tiddliwinks and the US troops should up and come home right now. They won't, of course, because they know their claims are flimsy at best. It isn't about the truth, it is about the narrative.

The same likely goes for yesterday's arrest of a further six Iranian diplomats in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Although the building they were working from was not a consul and so had no diplomatic status, those seized do. Iraq's foreign minister, himself a Kurd, has condemned the raid.

"What happened ... was very annoying because there has been an Iranian liaison office there for years and it provides services to the citizens," Hoshiyar Zebari, who is himself a Kurd, told Al-Arabiya television.

"We are in contact with the (U.S.) embassy and the American forces to seek their release."

Which echoes a statement of strong condemnation already made by the Kurdish regional government.

I would be amazed if six known diplomats, working in a region where the inhabitants are very pro-American and very anti-Iran and where violence is at an Iraqi version of minimum, could be doing other than trying to mend bridges with the oil-rich region and trying to stop Kurdish terrorists attacking Iran. I suspect that, yet again, they will be released quickly and evidence will be claimed but not shown for accustaions of Iranian "interference".

All of which lends credence to rumors from Washington insiders that Bush, "yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran". Bush's speech certainly attempted to claim a "causus belli". It is simply more provocation designed to incite even more direct and escalated Iranian retaliation in search of the scary story for American voters. Ian Welsh at The Agonist rightly points out too that Bush has sent a second carrier battlegroup to the gulf in a sabre-rattling move that could just as easily be turned to hostile action once the Iraqi board is cleared. Meanwhile, Bush officials are bending backwards to ensure that they do not rule out military options and do not ever deny that the President has the authority to start a war without the permission of Congress.

They are keeping their options open alright - will fear of war with Iran be enough to ensure a Republican is the next incumbent of the White House or will they need an actual war? It is a dangerous game to play and there are more ways it could go wrong than they can possibly think of. Either way, it can only be hoped that sensible and ethical conservatives will decide they do not want political victory by such means. If so, then the neocons are living on borrowed time along with Iraq's Maliki. If not, then we all might be.